Can emotion regulation release bad emotions?

There is no absolute yes or no to this question. The key depends on whether the emotion regulation method you choose is suitable for your current emotional state. If you choose the right method, it can indeed relieve the bad emotions stuck in your heart. If you use the wrong method, it may "vent" and worsen the emotion.

In the past few years of working in grassroots psychological services, I have seen many related examples. There was a little girl in the second grade of junior high school who had a conflict with her parents and held it in for almost two weeks. She couldn't eat or write in her homework. The little illustrations she liked to draw were all gray and black. Later, I accompanied her to the vent corner of the activity room and played with inflatable sandbags for half an hour. When she got tired, she squatted on the ground and cried for ten minutes. When she got up, she said that the big stone on her chest that had been pressed for a long time seemed to be much looser. After three days, she took the initiative to talk to her parents about the quarrel, and she suddenly recovered. This is the effect of using the right cathartic adjustment method. In essence, the tension accumulated on the physiological level is released first. The emotions blocked there will naturally soften, and space can be freed to think about how to solve the problem.

But not all "cathartic" behaviors can have a regulating effect. Last month, a young man who worked in Internet operations came to me and said that he had a conflict with Party A a while ago. He complained to his friends all night after get off work. The more he talked, the more angry he became. He even smashed the idle keyboard when he got home. As a result, when he woke up the next day, he still felt even worse when he thought about it, and he didn't even want to go to work. When I checked the relevant literature before, I also saw the corresponding research conclusion: unfocused emotional venting will actually activate the amygdala, making people immersed in negative feelings for a longer period of time. To put it bluntly, the more you scold, the angrier you will be, and the more you think about it, the more you will suffer. In the end, this kind of catharsis will deepen the emotions that could have faded away slowly.

The current academic classification of emotional regulation already includes the category of "emotional catharsis," but "catharsis" in the academic definition is not the same thing as "letting off steam" as we usually think of it. The core of catharsis that can really play a regulatory role is to release the physiological tension caused by emotions first, and try not to ruminate on the event itself during the process. For example, when you are angry, you go for a five-kilometer run, go to a KTV to sing your favorite song for two hours, or even turn to the empty chair after saying what you want to say. This is really effective. If you keep holding on to the thought "I'm so wronged and so angry" during the process of venting, it's not actually an emotional adjustment at all, it's just causing trouble for yourself.

After all, emotional regulation is a very personal matter, and there is no unified standard answer. If you try it yourself and feel comfortable and your emotions can slowly calm down, then that is a good method that suits you.